So I think the general idea is that you can convert more CO² to carbon in the form of sugars and O² molecules per square foot with algae than with trees. Trees would totally do the same thing if we ripped up all the concrete and buildings to replant a forest, but that process would take decades.
This can be added into existing infrastructure and helps I guess. Kinda a neat concept.
...if we ripped up all the concrete and buildings to replant a forest...
You say this like it's a downside, we'd better get started!
Hey, I'd be the first wanker with a sledge out breaking it up if we all went in on it together. Something tells me I wouldn't get very far tho
It would be. Cities and urban areas aren't the problem. Suburbs, with 20+ Minute commutes, on hot swollen rivers of concrete and asphalt flowing from them, with every individual in their own metal/polymer box burning hydrocarbons is the bigger problem. Cities might be a solution.
Conversely these algae tanks can go lots of places a tree wouldn't be practical. They'll never need to be trimmed out of power lines etc. Or tear up sidewalks, streets or foundations. That's not to say we shouldn't have trees. Just more green overall.
I have this fantasy where we humanity has a whole biotechnology skill tree that we never unlocked but there's like a Renaissance waiting to happen that will one day uncover all these cool new branch's
also algae farms can be arbitrarily vertical and can be built underground if you supply them with CO2 - trees are mostly limited to the surface.
But why not just like... Do that somewhere where the mass actually makes a difference? You'd be better off dumping acres full of this shit instead of regrowing a forest. Doing it in individual tanks, sparsely within a city, is both an inefficient use of resources and fucking ugly.
Trees only purpose in a city is not to clean out CO2. It's not even their primary purpose in a city. If it was, they'd be selecting specific species etc.
Alright I'm just going off of what I learned in environmental science class this summer, not an expert here. There was something about algae blooms (usually caused by fertilizer runoff) being a really bad thing for local ecosystems. I'm not sure if this is relevant to what you're saying, just throwing it out there lol
Pedantic, but for carbon dioxide or oxygen (or most other molecules you’ll write out) it’s a subscript for the number. Wikipedia
~So it would be CO~2~ or H~2~O or O~2~~
Seems my markdown is rusty, however you make subscripts I guess for CO<sub>2</sub>
While it's good to be skeptical, algae tanks like this are actually a good idea for the use-cases for which they are designed. Places where trees would be difficult and expensive to grow. The tanks more efficiently capture carbon, require less maintenance, produce fertilizer as a byproduct and the solar panels on the tank produce enough extra power for there to be a USB charger on the bench. The goal isn't to replace trees with tanks but to use them where it makes sense to do so.
This was my thought as well. They should be used in addition to, not as a replacement for, trees, bushes, and grass.
It does make me wonder, though, whether or not we could use these to help capture more carbon than we're creating.
That would require a gigantic scale of operations, and trees are just waaaay more economical.
Think of entire oceans full of algae not being enough to stop what's currently going on with ecological situation.
Too expensive to grow trees? Thank god capitalism is saving us so much money, we are all so rich now that we can simply buy oxygen tanks instead of having to deal with those money sucking trees and plants.
To echo what some other people have said, these algae tanks absolutely should not be used instead of trees. If I see a tree get chopped down and replaced with one of these, I’ll be sad and angry. However, these can go in places where trees can’t go, like rooftops. And you don’t have to either wait for a tree to grow for a decade or take a tree from somewhere else to install one. It also serves as both a seating area and can mount a solar panel on top. These and trees both have their place and should both continue to be used.
Putting a ton of water on the roof isn't a good idea, unless it was already rated for a swimming pool.
They don't need to be inside cities at all.
Well Trees don't make as much money for rich people who own everything and Trees make hot days more comfortable for homeless people
Algea is a much much better oxygenator with lower maintainence, people don't seem to notice how fast cities can kill trees.
And the oceans are incredibly vast, so they provide most of the world's oxygen! Obviously it's hard to get a precise number but 50-70% is the accepted range.
There are many reasons to plant trees in the city but local oxygen supply isn't one of them. Mostly trees look nice, and make people feel better by their presence. They also have a significant cooling effect, something a steamy tank full of warm algae definitely won't help with on a summer day.
We keep killing the ocean then asking why we need those stupid plants.
even so, I bet the billionaires were ecstatic about how it doesn't give any shade on hot days
I think it has more to do with the fact trees require more maintenance, like raking up leaves and fruit, and having to saw off branches.
Also those roots can break pavement and pipes.
Well of course, you can't give working class people any money for working, you can only give them a slave-wage. That's why all manufacturing was outsourced to very underdeveloped countries when NAFTA was first put into place.
You can easily get away with exploiting people who have no other choice but to work for a dollar per year, but it's much more difficult to do that to someone's neighbor in their community.
We just have to remove the roof from that thing so it won't be shadowy, and make a wall in the bottom so it can't be used to lay down.
Street trees aren't car-supremacist enough.
Let me explain what I mean by that: when a driver fucks up and his car careens off the street and hits a tree, the tree stops the car very abruptly. That's great for, say, an innocent pedestrian who was saved by hiding behind the tree, but can apply rather serious consequences to the negligent driver. Car-brained traffic engineers see it as their mission to protect drivers from any and all consequences, so they insist on ripping out all the trees to create a gigantic "clear zone" so that the car is free to careen wherever it wants without hitting anything solid. Squishy things within the clear zone, such as pedestrians, don't enter into consideration.
In other words, one important "advantage" of these "liquid trees" over real trees is that they can be mounted on breakaway stands, so that they yield (and therefore provide no protection to any hapless bastard who might've been sitting on the bench at the time) when a car hits them.
Source: I'm a former traffic engineer. But don't take it from me; watch this confession from a much more experienced and credible engineer explaining it in even more stark terms.
Is that why there are so many metal poles next to roads?
Sounds to me like that is a US-centric issue.
It's sad that the effort to do something innovative to solve a problem can easily get dismissed via a zero effort critique by someone who never took the time to learn why it was created.
nice, thank you.
There is a tree right next to it. LOL so obviously space for trees. The trunks take up less space, its just they require pulling up surrounding sidewalk sometimes, and maintenance crew for trimming and watering in dry spells.
Trees are great on sidewalks, but it is much easier to control the weight of an algae tank if you want to make a green roof for a building.
I think a lot of these are just cool experiments and projects grad students do for the sake of doing them. Then some hack writes an op ed about how we don't need to worry about deforestation because we can plop algae tanks down instead.
I thought it was more of an experiment that, if proven successful, could eventually aid in the exploration of space since we would need to engineer ways of creating oxygen for prolonged travel.
Oh thank god. We don't have to worry about deforestation anymore? Phew. Thanks, tank of algae.
Sadly, dealgaeation is quickly becoming a catastrophic problem. However, we are confident we can soon genetically modify human lungs to partially breathe the sulphur clouds that will engulf our planet!
Trees offer real world benefits of carbon reduction, temperature reduction, shade for people, the psychological benefits that trees offer, some limited wildlife habitat, and they do it without much outside help. They grow themselves with decent maintenance.
But you have to build and maintain this tank. What carbon was used to do so, and what maintenance will it need. Can it offset its own cost? It offers no benefits to wildlife, no shade, no temperature reduction.
Yeah, trees leave leaf litter and can heave sidewalks with roots, but given that neither system is perfect, there’s no reason to argue that boxes of algae are better.
Why do we need to argue which is better? In some places, beautification isn't really practical, but you can still stick these around. They don't look hard to install or uninstall, unlike trees.
I would hate to see a tree actually replaced by one these. But no one but the meme is saying that is the plan.
I think we have reached the limit for how much we should "improve" and replace nature, if there's no room for trees we should make room instead of accomodating yet another industrial solution to a problem created by industry in the first place.
We're going in the wrong direction.
carbon reduction
Mostly indirect.
Also trees dampen noise
Can it offset its own cost?
I guess.
there’s no reason to argue that boxes of algae are better.
Depends on metric of choice. Still I would prefer trees.
Trees are too useful so we keep cutting them down
Nobody uses an urban tree that gets cut down. It just gets hauled off to the landfill.
It's absolutely ludicrous that when the gigantic oak in my yard fell the arborist didn't know of anybody who could cut it up into lumber for me -- even in a city with so many urban trees that it's called the "city in a forest" -- but allegedly the economics of it don't work out, or something. I dunno if that's true, but it pisses me off enough that I'm half-tempted to go buy a damn portable sawmill and start a business doing it myself.
Say that to the table in my living room. (They removed a lot of old exotic trees that were lining some road some years back, those trees got sold to people making nice tables).
Selling the trees was only a side effect, and these weren't your run of the mill trees either. But exceptions exist
I'd have to see how it is better than, worse than trees on a case-by-case basis. But generally speaking, I can think of a few reasons this is better:
Trees are messy. They take a long time to grow, they take constant maintenance while growing, then they eventually die. Tree roots fuck up pipes & concrete. If this installation is equivalent to 1 or more trees, it is doing the work in a fraction of the space.
At the same time, though, green space has shown to improve mental health. I would be curious (and very sceptically biased) if algae tanks have the same impact.
Trees also provide shadows and space for birds and other animals.
SciShow made a video about these: https://youtu.be/QUGJPZ1a308
That is super cool and my immediate assumptions were dispelled. I would love to see these in my city.
Thanks for posting this! I was curious about this and had to scroll through so many miserable comments in this thread to find this.
For real, the people on this site deserve the hell they create for each other. If Kbin had a functioning account delete button, I'd have been gone months ago.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/QUGJPZ1a308
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Guys, it's not one or the other. We can have trees and algae tanks. Trees can still offer all of the benefits they do like shade and beauty while algae tanks can be used to increase fresh oxygen. Algae is much better at absorbing CO2 than trees and providing clean air which is a big problem in a busy city.
Funnily enough, both are in the picture.
It is one or the other because they'll come out of the same budget - it's an "opportunity cost". So if the city has $1000 to spend on either a tree or a tank, then they can't spend the same $1000 on both items. We'd need some balance between the two.
We are in a parasitic relationship with capitalism. Capitalism constantly extracts from life and the environment. When life begin to limit captialism, capitalism will go to great ends to remove life. Capitalism is not sustainable, nor is it naturally occurring. Abolish this evil system.
This whole thread is a great example of why I'm continually disappointed with Lemmy. Half the comments are just some variation of "capitalism bad". I hate capitalism as much as the next guy, but it sure would be nice if people would stop grinding their axes for a few minutes to talk about the actual subject of the post. Or just not comment at all if they don't have anything relevant to say.
People tend to forget that trees have roots.
Roots cause problems with infrastructure.
Hence why when a problem arises you try to "get to the root of it".Here's an example of what I mean:
https://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/images/urbanrootsninelg.jpgYoung drunk me would love to throw a brick at one of these..I don't know why but it looks very tempting
And it will happen. Stuff like this is neat, but stupid.
Make it out of plastic, problem solved.
These are so much more efficient than trees with far less infrastructure damage from roots growing into underground cabling and pipework.
I saw something like this, which piped exhaust from a generator thru a container of water and algae, with the idea to capture the co2, etc produced. Sure why not. I'll still prefer trees.
I'll still prefer trees
God, yes. Trees provide shade, transpirative cooling, homes for animals (birds, mammals, insects), and a particular natural beauty that tanks of algae do not.
Trees are too cheap
Trees can't survive if they can only get water from a 6''x6'' cookie cutter hole in concrete.
The answer is trees take years to grow and aren't suitable in places like rooftops
That's why there are no trees anywhere in cities, and roofs never have plants anywhere.
It is fucking street
And you can't grow trees on concrete. This one is particular is just the first one of it's kind and it's mostly in a spot to show off the technology. I'm not aware of any other ones that have been built yet.
Trees don't generate large profits this quarter, obviously.
They do for a landscaping company...
What about a nice shrubbery?
And then another shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle.
I’ve been curious and hopeful about algae, both for carbon capture and bio fuel.
But using it in cloudy green aquariums to decorate a city? I don’t know about that, lol.
Cloudy green petri dishes
I like it. :goldmedal:
All these people being like “why don’t we just use trees” as if the capitalists could profit from them like this. And not to say this is cost efficient, of course planting a tree would be better for everyone, but whoever installs these things will have a contract guaranteeing them money that taxpayers will be told is being put toward green initiatives and so will be eager to part with it I guess
Do you think that trees don't require money to upkeep?
Plus, they fuck up any infrastructure they're around, so that money is going to contractors anyway.
Shhhh, thinking about things past the barest surface level scares the tankies.
Local ordinances specify minimum space requirements for trees, which may mean that they're not allowed to be put in certain places. Also, they can cause pedestrian safety issues, as well as Ada compliance problems in confined spaces. This is an easy way to get something green in a place where you would otherwise not see a tree because of a lot of beaurocratic bullshit.
Obviously, you can argue that all that needs to be changed. And you'd be right. And in many places it's moving that way. But then you also wouldn't get anything done for quite some time. This is an option where there might be no other viable options at the moment.
They aren’t liquid enough.
From the pictures, the tank's only a couple meters from a tree itself. "supplement" would be a better word than "alternative" in the headline
Roots fuck things up.
It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywher...wait...that's sands... Nevermind...
This doesn't have a root system to worry about so it needs less underground space. Don't get me wrong I love me a good tree, but in places where there isn't enough land for roots to spread this could be useful. Lots of side walk trees die due to not enough space for the roots
Tbf, it was an art installation and the overreactions it generated are hilarious.
It's been proven that humans didn't actually get most of their fresh air from the rainforest, but actually from millions of these algea in the sea... Which is actually more logical, since trees do the opposite at night, kinda undoing any advantage they made during the day... Hence why it's said you should never put a decorative small tree or even plants in the bedroom as they can take away oxygen levels in closed rooms at night. It's even said not to sleep under trees outside at night cause it can cause respiratory problems.
They don't use enough oxygen over night to negate the effect as they use the carbon to grow. It's still bad to have a lot of plants in your bedroom, but it doesn't really matter as long as they are relatively small.
That had me go and look it up and apparently you're right that they use part of the carbon dioxide as energy storage, but as I understand this storage eventually gets released in full when the tree dies too...
Not sure if that would be so much to balance it out again, but it does still diminish their overall effect even more...
I am under the impression that trees don't actually produce that much oxygen. That they're more like carbon banks, storing it as they grow and then releasing it again when they die, rot or burn down. Meanwhile most of the oxygen produced actually comes from algae and other sources.
Source: some old memory of something I heard, so take it with a grain of salt. It would explain these things tho, beyond the cases where growing a tree would be impractical.
Imagine replacing trees with those, and some drunk breaking the glass like once a week lmao
That was my thought as well. I've seen what some homeless people are capable of. (Not trying to dump on unhoused people, here, but there are some seriously ill people left out on the streets). This glass needs to be nearly unbreakable for it to work
Not to mention what ordinary pub goers can do!
Can't wait for some teenager to smash it as a dare.
I had trouble with your link, so here's some similar ones:
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=VY9kh140gnwHere is an alternative Piped link(s):
The “Liquid Tree” is Very Cool Actually
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Trees have trouble in urban areas with a lot of traffic
Traffic has trouble in urban areas with a lot of trees
Trees and algae have different utilities. Trees are beautiful, reduce temperature, offer shade, and produce a modest amount of oxygen. Algae tanks produce vastly more oxygen by volume and cause you to question whether it’s really enough to continue meandering through life in this stone and metal postmodern hellscape and maybe it’s okay to finally indulge in a vacation near open fields and untamed wilderness. The local camping spots might be available in a few weeks if my sanity can hold out. One doesn’t completely substitute the other.
They are too good
Because they pick trees that have gender. They plant male trees, see dogwoods, the flower but not bare fruit. So you get allergies because of tree cum. And as far as I know plankton cum doesn't come with side effects.
They grow upside down
Unless you invert it
the shade is also important
Because Trees are for rich people only.
Poor people don't get natural shade. They just get to see "luxury" apartment towers with tenant only "public parks from a distance.
/sVtnc
All safely contained in an airtight tank so that pesky O2 doesn't escape back into the atmosphere
easier to digest
Trees die
I don't even understand which part of the tree experience these tanks are supposed to replace. Are they really just there to pick up CO2? Because you can also plant a forest outside the city for that.
You'll miss out on all the other tree benefits, but so you also will with these glass tanks.
People can grow trees. You need a lot more to make one of those contraptions. Hard to control people when they can just grow a plant to do what they need.
